Throughout my time in Germany, one of the “soft” skills that I think I’ve developed most has been my ability to network and strike up a conversation with anyone. I’ve gone to numerous networking events on behalf of Vireo, and made a lot of strong connections with people there – from executives at other investment firms, to a member of the German Chamber of Commerce. I think that this soft skill is one that truly only improves through getting out of your comfort zone, and talking with people you don’t know as much as possible. I’ve also practiced this skill a lot outside of the professional context, striking up conversations with people I meet on the street, in restaurants, or even on the public transportation here in Germany. This is something that I felt very nervous to do at the start of my time here, but since I’ve done it more, it’s become much more comfortable for me. I’ve also made sure to keep up having some virtual coffee chats with people back in the US, which has been really helpful for my professional development. I’ve been able to have those chats after my work days here in Germany, because 6pm in Berlin is noon on the east coast in the US. 

In terms of “hard” skills that I’ve developed further since coming to Germany, the list is long. I’ve definitely gotten better at market research, developing market sizing models, both top-down and bottom-up, and also creating investment theses. I’ve been tasked with creating a report on energy-efficient technology across the areas of physical AI, robotics, and industrial optimization. At the start of this summer, I knew nearly nothing about any of these fields. Getting thrown in the deep end (so to speak) and tasked with creating a thorough report of market research has been a great exercise in hands-on learning. I’ve researched industry trends in each of those areas, developed my own models for estimating the addressable market size for startups in each area, and ultimately developed my own investment recommendations to be distributed to the firm. The market size modelling was perhaps the hardest part for me, but also because of that, one of the areas I learned the most. 

For example, the addressable market for startups that perform autonomous inspection of energy infrastructure in Europe is not something you will find any reliable metrics about online. In order to build a reasonable market estimate, I started by finding verifiable metrics for the length of gas pipelines, power lines, and undersea cabling for offshore energy infrastructure in Europe. I also took the price per km that one of the startups that I spoke with was receiving for their services, and used that as a base case. From there, I estimated a bear case and bull case for price received per km of inspection, created a sensitivity table based on these pricing cases, and also added cases for percentages of total infrastructure captured. I found this really interesting, because it was difficult to think about how to approach something like this, but ultimately expanded my ability to tackle similar tasks. 

Another technical skill I’ve developed is deal sourcing for startups and the due diligence process that comes after. I’ve gone through probably upwards of 5,000 startups in a database, and through this process, I’ve begun to develop a sense of what startups might be worth further diligence, and which ones to throw off my list immediately. This part of my work was definitely a process that I’ve been able to refine as I went on. When I first started, I pulled a lot of startups that were interesting, but didn’t meet certain criteria that were necessary for our specific fund (for example, when they were founded, how much they had already been funded, and things like that). As time went on, and I kept incorporating feedback, my intuition and ability to source better startups from the get-go has increased significantly. I’ve also been able to listen to my colleagues’ investment ideas, and trying to understand their process and logic has also helped me in developing my own. 

As far as working in Germany goes, I have been able to navigate my cross-cultural workplace by remaining open-minded, and asking lots of questions. I believe that asking questions about cultural norms and differences, so long as the questions are respectful, is the best way to learn about the topic. My colleagues are always open to explaining German culture to me, and are also quite interested in hearing about American culture as well. While one or two of them have been to the US, many of them have never been – just like me with Europe, until this summer.